31 Days of Gratitude: Day 5

Today I am grateful for the sound of applause. I had to sit through a 2 hour town hall meeting at work today, and while the meeting was long and not all of the content was very uplifting, my VP kicks every meeting off by sharing an acknowledgment. It is generally a thank-you to someone within our organization who goes and above and beyond. When my VP first became the “VP” I was in his chief of staff office handling his talking points, power points etc., and one of the things he was adamant about implementing was that he kick off each large organizational-wide meeting with a thank you/acknowledgment. He is a different leader in that he’s more off the cuff, he doesn’t necessarily accept all social norms, and he genuinely cares about the work we all do (not to say that other’s at my company do not, but it is a well-known, shared feeling that he cares).

So, the reason I’m grateful for the sound of applause is because today when he kicked off his town hall with a thank you it was immediately followed with an applause, which is different from any other applause because it’s not just a “thanks for talking at us for 30 minutes now get off the stage,” applause; it’s an applause with gratitude and appreciation. If you ask me, that is different from the norm. The interesting part of this afternoon is that I didn’t think about how nice that was until I sat down to write today’s gratitude blog. My VP wasn’t even acknowledging me in the kick-off of his meeting, but I still recognized how nice it is (now from the audience perspective and not from the writing-his-talking-points-perspective) to have a meeting start on a high note of appreciation and acknowledgment of a job well-done.

We live in a world today where a lot of things are not a cause for applause, so when it’s time to put our hands together for someone who is really doing fantastic work, I appreciate that and feel it in an uplifting way. Let’s think about this, we clap our hands for babies all the time. It makes them smile, and gets them excited. That’s what true applause should do – and I felt that this afternoon, and for that I’m grateful. However, I was also grateful for the final applause because it meant my two hour town hall meeting was over – but that’s neither here nor there 🙂